Monthly Archives: July 2006

My Smoke Detector Adventure (Inspired by Steve Tanner) You may not realize it, but my inspiration to blog came from my friend and now Kidology Web Director, Steve Tanner. His forum homepage is at www.steveandamysly.com but all the conversations end up at the Tannerworld Junction. There you can read about… well, just about anything. From beverage reviews to bathroom hand dryer advertising to the Trash Cans of DisneyWorld to his new toothbrush to the history of Dorito’s logos or watch Star Wars as an animated GIF! It’s all there among thousands of the other 13,547 posts Steve has posted to date! But this week, his inspiration went to all new heights and INSPIRED ME! It was his latest edition of This New Tanner Condo. (Changing the Smoke Detector!) READ IT! I was so inspired, I decided that I needed to blog my own adventure with a smoke detector. My smoke detector wasn’t broken, but it has needed a new battery for awhile now. So here is the blog record of my ADVENTURE this evening. I’d like to dedicate this post to Steve Tanner. Here is my upstairs smoke detector. It has been disconnected for several months. (My wife claims it …

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HAPPY SIX MONTHS LUKE! Baby Luke is now 6 months old, and to celebrate, he had food for the first time! Luke is all smiles as Sara gives him his first spoonful of rice cereal… Not so sure he likes it… but doesn’t fight it. Mom and Dad aren’t sure how much got into his stomach! Instead of going to a studio or kid-photo place, we decided to try our hand at doing our own Six Month Pictures…. how did we do? Though, we did have a pretty cute kid to work with! Ooooooo… this is soft!Winter styles… Just chillin… Hi, I’m Luke! You can’t help love me, can you? Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee DAD’S FAVORITE: Bombs Away on Mom! Every day with this baby is a joy and a delight. I’ not sure how I survived not being a dad. I was made for this. People ask me often how I am adjusting to being a Dad, and I answer, “I always was adjusted, I just lacked the kid.” Probably doesn’t make any sense to most, but I feel like there is no adjustment… its the way it’s supposed to have been, and finally having a kid just feels so right. I’m …

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Well, it was time for our third annual Children’s Ministry Leadership Team / Kidology Staff Camping Trip! Starved Rock, Illinois was the destination this time. This week away from cell phone, e-mail and Internet each year is a wonderful break for me! And… it was Luke’s FIRST time camping! A family at church was nice enough to loan us their RV so that Luke didn’t have to suffer in a hot tent, and with temperatures in the high 80’s and 90’s all week, it was GREAT to have an air-conditioned RV… it also meant we had lots of visitors often as well: A bunch of happy campers enjoying Luke…. or the air-conditioning? (ok, both!) but my favorite is always the evening camp fires. Luke took right to it! We feared that camping would be rough on the boy, but he seemed to enjoy it alot. Never cried and was sooo easy going. Of course, there were lots of kids and big friends constantly giving him attention and love. Here is Baby Luke in his swing… and he LOVES to swing! Mom with Luke ready for some evening singing around the camp fire. Dad enjoys playing the guitar and leading singing…. …

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NOT SO SUPER. I was excited to go see the new Superman movie – and the rave reviews got my expectations higher than they already were. I left disappointed.The gist is Superman left for five years to go check out his planet that was recently discovered. He arrives back in another crash landing on the Kent farm… kinda odd that with no survivors he still comes back in a meoter instead of just flying home. Oh, well, I can dismiss that, it made for a grand entrance. The opening scene flying through space was almost as good as “Contact” (Jodie Foster) and had a few planets I’d love as wallpapers. GREAT FIRST FEAT! His first big ‘Save the Day’ hero duties was pretty awesome… we were alone in the theator so I went ahead a clapped and cheered out loud with the crowd on screen, it was a sweet return and his one liner to those he saved was priceless, “I hope this doesn’t discourage you from flying. Statisically its still the safest way to travel.” I won’t give away the rescue, just to say, it was what I was expecting the whole movie, but unfortunately it was downhill from …

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Ever since I was the house magician at the Rock ‘n Roll McDonald’s in downtown Chicago (in college) I’ve been twisting balloons for kids at church, birthday parties, magic shows, etc. But my use of them in my ministry for teaching was pretty minimal and limited to one balloon creatures. That was until very recently. “Master Ron” as he is known, is a Christian children’s entertainer and awesome juggler and balloon artist. I have used him for years to sub for me in Kids Church when I’m out of town, and he is the only sub I’ve had that the kids just don’t seem to miss me at all when I get back. (is that good, or not?) :-) A computer systems analyst by day, and a balloon twistin’ juggler by evenings and weekends, Master Ron is a great teacher and communicator with kids…. and an inspiration to me. This summer I had him teach all our grade school kids at our church for Sunday School in June. We found ourselves with three weeks to ‘fill’ between our regular Sunday School and when our summer Family Sunday School class could start, and I needed something easy for me and fun …

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Karl Bastian is the founder of Kidology.org and host of KidminTalk.com.
He is a children's pastor, speaker, entertainer and an equipper & encourager of those who minister to children.
Learn more about him at: Who is Karl? Connect at the social links below: